As Olympic golden girl Victoria Pendleton admits self-harming… the secret pressures driving so many teenage girls to cut

Recent research suggests that between one in 12 and one in 15 British teenagers is known to self-harm, while the number of children being admitted to hospital in England with self-inflicted injuries has increased by 68 per cent in the past decade.

As Olympic golden girl Victoria Pendleton admits self-harming… the secret pressures driving so many teenage girls to cut

By Antonia Hoyle

PUBLISHED: 16:58 EST, 5 September 2012 | UPDATED: 12:26 EST, 6 September 2012

Anguish: ‘I hated my body and wanted to hurt it,’ says Megan

Amy Feltham took a deep breath and ran her penknife across her arm. As the blade pierced her skin and blood seeped out, she felt a sense of calm and quiet relief.

The sudden pain eclipsed the problems that had been flooding her mind for the past few hours and, for a few moments at least, Amy felt free of the pressures of life.

Afterwards, she pulled down her sleeves, walked out of the toilets at her secondary school and returned to class.

Amy, who has bravely agreed to talk publicly about her behaviour, is one of a growing number of teenage self-harmers in Britain. She is speaking out in the hope of stopping other young girls from following her own destructive path.

These rates are the highest in Europe. Worryingly, the true number may be higher still, as experts believe only 12 per cent of adolescents who self-harm, including increasing numbers of boys, come to the attention of the authorities.

Even Olympic cycling star Victoria Pendleton admitted to self-harming this week. She said the pressure to win and fear of failure led to her cutting her arms with a Swiss army knife until a ‘soothing numbness’ spread through her body.

Lucie Russell, director of campaigns and policy at mental health charity Young Minds, says: ‘These shocking statistics should act as a wake-up call. Young people are under a lot of pressure. Self-harm is a coping strategy, but a very destructive one.’

So what is driving so many teenagers to hurt themselves? In Amy’s case, self-harm was sparked by a desire to do well at school. A straight-A pupil and the product of a privileged, middle-class upbringing, she was expected by her parents to sail through school before studying to become a doctor.

But by the age of 13, she felt crippled by the pressure to succeed.
‘My SATS exams were approaching, and I worried about letting myself down,’ says Amy, now 19 and living with her parents in London.

‘One day I accidentally stubbed my toe and the pain temporarily stopped my anxiety, so that evening I started squeezing my lip with my hole punch.

‘I didn’t want to have to explain a cut so I stopped before it bled, but the pain provided a distraction.’

Over the next few weeks Amy regularly punched her lip and, when that wasn’t enough to instill calm, she used the blade from her pencil sharpener to cut her arms instead.

‘Before long I was cutting myself at home and school,’ she says. ‘I didn’t stop until I saw blood, which made me feel I’d let the pain out.’

After four months Amy, the youngest of three sisters, confided in her father, 57, an occupational psychologist, and her mother, 45, a nursery teacher.

‘We had a close relationship and I wanted their help,’ she says.
Amy’s GP put her on Prozac, but the anti-depressants actually made her feel worse. ‘I grew suicidal,’ she says.

Within a month, she’d taken three overdoses and was admitted to Springfield psychiatric hospital in South London for three months.

‘It wasn’t a cry for help: I wanted to die,’ she says.

Eventually back at school, Amy started self-harming again. ‘I still felt under pressure, and now I was alienated from my classmates who knew I’d been ill,’ she says.

Amy bought a Stanley knife and began to cut her legs and stomach as well as her arms. ‘If my parents took away my knife I’d use a compass until I could buy another one,’ she says.

Amy tried to keep her cuts hidden by wearing long-sleeved tops. ‘If anybody noticed them, I’d say I’d fallen into a bush or the cat had scratched me.’

Frequent overdoses and admissions to hospital inevitably affected her grades. She was hospitalised throughout much of her GCSEs and too ill for A-levels.

She went to college to study health and social care, but dropped out after six weeks. At 17, after another stint in hospital, she got a job as a nursery assistant. She finally stopped self-harming a year ago, after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

‘I was finally referred to the right specialists,’ she says. ‘Through them I learned how to find release through expressing my emotions, and now, if I get the urge to self-harm, I talk to someone instead.’

Amy says her parents have blamed themselves. ‘They’ve asked if there was something they could have done differently, but it wasn’t their fault. I put the pressure on myself.

‘My scars upset me, but they’re a part of my past and remind me how lucky I am to have moved on.’

Celebrity culture and social media may be contributing to the rising number of teenagers who self-harm.

Stars including the late Amy Winehouse have confessed to doing it, while internet message boards and Twitter provide a forum for anonymous self-harmers to discuss cutting themselves in disturbing detail.

Psychiatrist Dr Alys Cole-King, who has spent 20 years treating self-harm patients, says: ‘There is emerging evidence that websites promoting self-harm may have more influence on vulnerable young people than we previously realised.’

Young people who self-harm often suffer from eating disorders, too, and are expressing their self-hatred by harming their bodies in different ways.

Megan Armer, now 19, is a case in point. She has struggled with her weight since the age of four, when classmates bullied her for being stocky.

By the time she was 13, she was bulimic and arguing with her mother Elaine, 51, and father Dave, 60, who both work for an NHS printing company, about her refusal to eat normally.

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